Wireless data networks serve wireless User Equipment (UEs) with mobile data communication services like internet access, voice calling, and machine communications. The wireless UEs could be computers, phones, headsets, graphic displays, vehicles, drones, or some other wireless communication apparatus. The wireless data networks have wireless base stations that wirelessly exchange user data and signaling over the air with these wireless UEs. The wireless UEs and base station use wireless networking protocols like New Radio (NR) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) to communicate over the air.
The typical wireless base station has an antenna array, radio, and baseband unit. The baseband unit exchanges user data between a data communication network and the radio. The radio digitizes, modulates, amplifies, and filters the user data for the antenna array. The antenna array features antenna elements that are typically metallic center-tapped dipoles. The antenna array wirelessly exchanges user data with the UEs. Based on received signal strength at the wireless base station, the base station directs the UEs to use various power levels for their wireless signal transmissions to the base station. Based on received signal strength at the UEs, the wireless base station also selects its own power levels for transmissions to the UEs. The wireless base station has a maximum transmit power for all UEs. For example, a wireless base station may have a maximum transmit power of 40 watts for all UEs in a given sector.
Beamforming technology uses multiple antennas at the transmitter to emit wireless signal beams directed at specific UEs. Beamforming technology also uses multiple antennas at the receiver to separate different wireless signals from different antennas. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology controls how user data is wirelessly transferred over the multiple antennas. Using MIMO, the same data may be transferred in parallel over several antennas for reliability, or different data may be transferred in parallel over several antennas for throughput. With Multi-User (MU) MIMO, the wireless base station and multiple UEs share the same time and frequency resource blocks by using beamforming.
Unfortunately, the antenna arrays that use both NR and LTE have not been optimized for power distribution across the NR and LTE antenna elements. Moreover, these LTE/NR antenna arrays have not been optimized for MU-MIMO. In addition, the LTE/NR antenna arrays have not been optimized to efficiently and effectively handle varying load conditions and antenna element configurations.